4.26.2016

ten things tuesday

This week's topic is: 10 Movies You Have To Stop & Watch When You Come Across Them While Channel Surfing.

1) Under the Tuscan Sun. When Frances Mayes learns her husband is cheating on her from a writer whom she gave a bad review, her life is turned upside down. In an attempt to bring her out of a deep depression, her best friend, Patti, encourages Frances to take a tour of Italy. During the trip, the new divorcée impulsively decides to purchase a rural Tuscan villa and struggles to start her life anew amid colorful local characters, including the handsome Marcello.

2) Notting Hill. This is the first film that made me really like Julia Roberts.

3) Elf. Buddy was accidentally transported to the North Pole as a toddler and raised to adulthood among Santa's elves. Unable to shake the feeling that he doesn't fit in, the adult Buddy travels to New York, in full elf uniform, in search of his real father. As it happens, this is Walter Hobbs, a cynical businessman. After a DNA test proves this, Walter reluctantly attempts to start a relationship with the childlike Buddy with increasingly chaotic results.

4) Mrs. Doubtfire. An unemployed voice actor creates a character so that he can spend time with his children.

5) The American President. A widowed U.S. president and a lobbyist fall in love. It's all aboveboard, but "politics is perception" and sparks fly anyway.

6) Jeremiah Johnson. A Mexican War veteran becomes a mountain man who wishes to live the life of a hermit and becomes the unwilling object of a long vendetta by Indians when he proves to be the match of their warriors in one-to-one combat on the early frontier.

7) National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. A classic holiday family movie--where anything that can go wrong does go wrong.

8) Something's Gotta Give. When aging womanizer Harry Sanborn and his young girlfriend, Marin, arrive at her family's beach house in the Hamptons, they find that her mother, dramatist Erica Barry, also plans to stay for the weekend. Erica is scandalized by the relationship and Harry's sexist ways. But when Harry has a heart attack, and a doctor prescribes bed rest at the Barry home, he finds himself falling for Erica -- who, for once, may be out of his league.

9) It's Complicated. This was one I saw at the theater and couldn't wait to own on DVD. I just love this story of a middle-age woman who's powerful and in control, even if it is complicated.

10) The Holiday. A movie about a Christmas vacation. Two women on opposite sides of the Atlantic swap homes for a 2-week vacation. I am compelled to watch it every time it's on TV.

5 comments:

I'm surprised to see Jeremiah Johnson on your list, because of the Redford/Pollack collaborations, it's my least favorite. (Perhaps because it's the least like the others, which are romantically inclined.) Redford refers to it as his most "personal" movie.

I loved Under the Tuscan Sun- I brought my daughter (now 21) to the theater when it came out for a Mother-daughter date. I guess she was old for her age- I think she was in 4th grade. But it holds special memories. The colors and scenes were lovely too!